I was trying to record an internet radio show (that my friend appeared on) today and discovered that Dell had nicely “removed” the feature to record what was going through my speakers.  After some searching and driver install hacking, I got it to work.  Here’s what I did:

  1.  Download the latest drivers from Dell
  2. Run the EXE, but once it gets to the license screen I cancelled (but you do want it to unzip to a folder)
  3. Go into the folder and into the i386 folder (for you intel users)
  4. Go into the vista folder
  5. back up the ADIHdAud.inf file
  6. open up the ADIHdAud.inf file and make the following edits:
  7. change:  HKR,AD1983\\Disable, OutR, 1, 01
  8. to:   HKR,AD1983\\Disable, OutR, 1, 00
  9. change:  HKR,AD1983\\Disable, MonR, 1, 01
  10. to:  HKR,AD1983\\Disable, MonR, 1, 00
  11. change:  HKR,AD1984\\Disable, MonR, 1, 01
  12. to:  HKR,AD1984\\Disable, MonR, 1, 00
  13. By changing these values you will now have a fresh install that includes the stereo mix feature (I believe the 1->0 change told it to no longer disable the feature)
  14. Save the file
  15. Go to your device manager in your control panel
  16. Go to sound, video and game controllers and select soundmax
  17. hit the delete key on your keyboard
  18. tell it to delete the drivers (check the box)
  19. reboot
  20. go to the directory where you dumped the drivers from the exe (the main directory that was above the ADIHdAud.inf  file)
  21. run the setup program
  22. now go to the control panel and select sound
  23. right click in a blank area in the box and select the “show disabled devices” option
  24. click on the recording tab
  25. right click on the stereo mix icon (faded icon) and select enable
  26. download audacity (free) – you may want the LAME encoder as well, if you prefer MP3 audio
  27. install audacity and run it
  28. select edit -> preferences -> audio i/o tab -> recording box -> device drop down box -> stereo mix
  29. hit OK
  30. hit the big red circle button to record (although I suggest that you have the stream running first)

Phew!  I just hate when companies break fully functional hardware.  In any case I hope this helped you as it did me. 

Here’s the references that I used:

 Helm of Disintegration

Gec Living